Through the pre-emptive program, Australian Facebook users that are worried about their intimate photos being potentially leaked are asked to send the images to themselves on Messenger. Once they have sent the image, Facebook’s technology would ‘hash’ or create a digital fingerprint of it.

“It would be like sending yourself your image in email, but obviously this is a much safer, secure end-to-end way of sending the image without sending it through the ether,” said Julie Inman Grant, e-Safety commissioner.

The process is intended to stop the image ever appearing on Facebook, whoever tries to upload it, by using the Facebook AI technologies used in photo and face matching on the social platform. Australia is one of four countries piloting the program.

Facebook previously implemented similar tools back in April. These tools mean that once a photo is removed from one of Facebook’s platforms, its photo-matching technology prevents further copies of the image being shared on Facebook, Messenger, or Instagram.

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